Post on 04-Jan-2016
description
Reinterpreting the Public Space: Creativity in the City
Anna Zhelnina
National Research University – Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg
Research Group “Creative City”
Bottom-up transformation of urban space by the means of art
• New actors – new visions of comfortable urban spaces
• Graffiti, guerilla gardening, do-it-yourself modifications: from “pure resistance and contestation” to “public place beautification” [Visconti et al. 2010]
• Role of the social and political context of transformation
• Dynamic, networked character of initiatives
Research Group “Creative City”
• Mapping initiatives in St Petersburg
• Studying the professional biographies and networks of activists
What are the different ways to (creatively) claim the right to the city?
Creativity as a resource of counter-public(s)?
Analytical frameworks
• Right to the city (Lefebvre, Harvey)• City within a city, politicization (Kurt
Iveson)• Counter-publics (Nancy Fraser)• Networked creativity
‘insurgent’, ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY), ‘guerrilla’, ‘everyday’, ‘participatory’ and/or ‘grassroots’ urbanism (Iveson 2009)
The right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right of individual access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city more after our heart’s desire [Harvey 2003: 931].
• “there are holes and chasms. These voids are not there due to chance. They are the places of the possible.” [Lefebvre, 1996: 156].
• Cities as totalizing projects, but not totalizations [Amin, Thrift]
Urban Creativity
• actions emerging between the cracks of formal urbanism [Iveson 2013: 943]
• ‘propose alternative lifestyles, reinvent our daily lives, and reoccupy urban space with new uses’ [Zardini 2008: 16]
Filling the urban gaps with creativity
• Street-artists (ad-busters)• Public art festival • “Urban activists” aiming to change the
environment [e.g. DIY urban festival]• Educational loft focusing on urban issues
• “building a politics to connect the practices is a matter of both appropriation and political subjectivization, in which practitioners make themselves parties to a disagreement over the forms of authority that produce urban space” [Iveson 2013: 943]
Исправляй!Угарай! / Modify!HaveFun
“Voice of the streets” scandal
Russian means Sober
DIY urban action marathon
• Direct changes, new visions of the ‘good urban space’, voice/ lifestyle/ values of a milieu / social group/ individual
• Networked creativity (legitimization and support) – potential for collective action?
• DIY as a new form of contentious politics? [Douglas 2011]
• Creativity as ‘weapon of the weak’?